Friday, July 30, 2010

Joe Arpaio's Goons Grab Salvador Reza Off the Street and Arrest Him, Again

...[C]ivil rights leader Salvador Reza of the group Puente was arrested this afternoon by a contingent of MCSO goons, apparently on Arpaio's direct orders.

Reza was in a parking lot across the street from where Arpaio was giving a press conference at an MCSO command post near the Lower Buckeye Jail, according to several witnesses.

Eleven protesters blocked the entrance and exit to the driveway as one of Arpaio's anti-immigrant sweeps was resuming.

The demonstrators were arrested by deputies and Arpaio came out to the street to talk to the media. According to Puente's Carlos Garcia, Arpaio gestured in Reza's direction and eight MCSO thugs rushed across the street to nab Reza, who was getting into his car. They cuffed him and hustled him away.

"Sal was out here by his car, he wasn't one of the protesters," Garcia told me at the scene. "As far as we know, he's a political prisoner."

Chris Newman, a lawyer for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said he was briefly detained by Captain David Letourneau, the head of Arpaio's SWAT detail, but he also witnessed the arrest of Reza.

"I heard someone yell, `Salvador Reza's getting in his car, we get him,'" said Newman, who had been across the street observing the protesters' arrests. "They left across the street, this is while I was being detained. The next thing you know, he was in cuffs being walked across the jail."...